- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was under intense scrutiny from lawmakers this week — as a similar situation was happening in China.
- The CEO of Chinese news app Toutiao was in the state's crosshairs, but ended up taking a very different path.
- The different outcomes show how much more power China wields over its tech giants.
- Companies can be punished not just for breaking the law, but contravening "the socialist system."
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A Chinese tech CEO was in a similar position to Mark Zuckerberg this week — and what happened shows how much power Beijing has
Zhang Yiming, the CEO of Toutiao, grovelled after contravening "core socialist values" and promised sweeping changes to his service — unlike Zuckerberg.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced the US Congress this week for an intense grilling on his network's struggles to handle user privacy, fake news, foreign interference, and more. The result was one big apology, two days of questioning — and very little change.
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean this week, the CEO of Toutiao, similarly faced off against his government, but did not emerge anywhere near as unscathed as Zuckerberg.
On Monday, Toutiao, a $20 billion news aggregator app with 120 million daily users, was suspended from Chinese app stores for three weeks. The next day, China's
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